Choose The Right Selling Agent!

As a seller, it's important to choose the right agent, remember, they represent you and only you. Use these questions to interview several agents before you make a choice.

1. Are you a full time Agent?
2. How long have you been in the Real Estate business?
3. Is your license in good standing (see DRE.ORG there is a license check )
4. Are you an MLS (Multiple Listing Service) Member?
5. How familiar are you with the area where our home is located?
6. How many homes did you sell in this area in the last year?
7. Can you supply 3 names and addresses of recent clients for whom you sold a home that we can contact for reference purposes?
8. How did you arrive at the suggested listing price for our home?
9. What is your specific marketing plan for our house?
10. How do you plan on keeping us informed of the progress of the sale of our home?

Considering discount or "less-than-full" service? 

Unless you have a lot of Real Estate experience and time, you'll usually lose much more than you'll gain.  If you are considering a discount realtor or FSBO (For Sale by Owner) ask yourself if you have the time available to do all of the following things in order to market your house properly:

1. Research selling prices of comparable homes in my area over the previous 3-6 months.
2. Staging, and determining how to prepare my house with minimum resources for max return (e.g. painting, landscaping...)
3. Decide in which local newspapers and other print publications to advertise  my house, and work up a good ad and color photos for each, and follow up on each publication date that I submitted and paid for.  Ditto for on-line publications, web sites and search engines.
4. Broker tours and the MLS. Think about it:  the maximum price you get will be determined by level exposure of to qualified buyers, and 80% of those are represented by real estate brokers and agents who are always on the lookout for their clients constantly seeking early previews of homes to be listed, and continually scanning Multiple Listing Service.
5. Qualifying. Can I screen people who might respond to my ads, or come knock at my door. If the ForSale sign in front of a home is a broker's sign, people will call the broker; otherwise even if it says "by appointment only", they will ring the doorbell at any time of the day or night.
6. Usually when a broker makes an appointment to bring someone over, they are either on time or if they're going to be more than 15 mins late, the seller gets a phone call. With "Mr & Mrs Bargainhunter" who called on your ad, you could have been sitting around for 2 hours wondering if they are still going to show up or whether they either changed their mind when they made the appointment.
7. Do I have the time available to risk waiting on no-shows and "looky-loos". People usually don't bother wasting a Professional Realtor's time for the same thing.
8. Offers, negotiating, counteroffering.
9. Can I handle contingencies, disclosures, inspections, all part of the closing process.  Rarely, after an offer is accepted, things go smooth as silk to closing.  It can be an excruciating time.